NAB to tweak products after social pilot

A pilot that saw the National Australia Bank's products rated by social media users has prompted the bank to make tweaks to its products to improve customer satisfaction as it considers rolling out the social commerce platform to other product lines.

A pilot that saw the National Australia Bank's products rated by social media users has prompted the bank to make tweaks to its products to improve customer satisfaction as it considers rolling out the social commerce platform to other product lines.

(Credit: Luke Hopewell/ZDNet Australia)

NAB kicked off the social e-commerce trial roughly six months ago, where credit card customers, who had been with the bank for over six months, were invited to review and post their experiences online.

"We're looking at finding better ways and better services for our customers to improve the customer experience and our relationships with them," said Chris Smith, general manager of Digital Services, adding that the bank was looking to mimic big international brands in its roll-out.

"If you look around the world and look at industry-leading experiences like Amazon and TripAdvisor, they're emerging with social media [platforms] for commerce. We thought it would be good to combine this capability for transparency in our products and get some feedback [on our products]," Smith said.

During the six-month pilot period, Smith said that each product received a mix of both positive and negative reviews, with one product attracting upward of 300 individual items of feedback.

Smith admits he was certainly concerned about some of the negative feedback that might appear, adding that he was later surprised by what the project gave way to.

"Like any institution, you may be a bit wary of putting up a portal for comments to come back from your customer base, but what we're surprised about is the volume and magnitude of feedback. We were surprised in that short time the volume that we got," Smith said.

As a result of the pilot, NAB is set to abolish the $25 fee it charges customers who spend over their credit card limits, trimming late payment fees from $30 to $5 and rejigging the credit card payment hierarchy so that high interest items are paid off first.

Smith said that within the next few months, NAB would decide whether or not it would roll out the rate and review system to other products.

"We're currently evaluating [further deployment] and we're looking at expanding it to other products. We haven't confirmed a date because we're trying to lock in some funding, but we're looking to see something within the next six months," Smith said.

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